


whitewater

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alien Culture, Character Study, Gen, light body horror, yall ever think about Branched...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28296687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: Not everyone can bear to be made for war. Corrasion volunteered.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	whitewater

**Author's Note:**

> i know the 'fuck it, baby, let's go' was just austin talking but unfortunately it immediately clicked perfectly into my understanding of the character.

Zig is, they think, a little bit of a dissolver himself. Zig is just a particular kind of creative about it, not being Branched, but it’s all the same thing. It’s how he works, what he is. Figures out how to get to people, wears them down in a hundred tiny streams of sincerity until they dissolve and reform as his. Now there’s a man being his best self.

He tries to do the same thing with Corrasion, even if maybe he doesn’t think of it like that. Corrasion does. They think he would shine even brighter if they melted him down. Rust on blood on rubies.

A shame they work so well together, on the same side! So they talk, instead, dissolving each other. Handsome shiny red Zig’ell shares too much, shares with them about things like _I always knew_. Idea that doesn’t apply to a Branched, but they’re sympathetic to it. There was never any hidden thing. It was in each little way they carved themself. Everything they were being. Pushing, cleverly, at a border, wearing away. Your freedom to be a fist ends at my face and so on. Corrasion liked that part of it too, was that too. The act of pushing, slipping by, slipping under. Wearing someone down until they cave.

They never killed anyone, though. Not until they were on the _frontlines_ because a certain kind of war with a certain kind of enemy requires a _front line_ , three-dimensional. Not everyone goes. Not everyone can bear to be made for war.

Corrasion volunteered.

It’s more that than _always knew_. They’re the sum of choices not in the pursuit of the ideal self but creating, step by step. That’s the thing the Principality people don’t understand. The first time they dissolved someone, it didn’t feel like coming home after time away. It was just waking up in your bed and stretching. It was making the toast and coffee the same way you always do, without having to think about it.

At least, those are the similes they’re given to understand. That’s the thing, the real thing Principality people don’t understand. One thing is always like another thing, in an endless and incoherent chain, and that’s why they don’t get it. _So you’re like acid? So you’re like a river? So you’re like time?_

All of the above, baby, and more.

They hadn’t quite figured it out yet, the first few times. The first few lives are more impacted or drowned than corroded. Washed away. They start to be what they couldn’t be. What they are.

The Branched are careful. They care for each other. To be made for war is a thing of grief, to most. Corrasion hasn’t made themself for war, though, is the thing. Corrasion has made themself into Corrasion. They have made themself to dissolve. It’s the Branched who say that’s a thing for war. That’s a thing you shouldn’t do here. Shouldn’t be here.

 _So they pulled you off the field?_ Ruby-dotted Zig’ell clicks his tongue, disappointed. _Happened to me a few times. For psych evals._

 _Something like that,_ they laugh as rushing water.

So: you can’t dissolve here, and you can’t do it on the front line. But dissolving is curious, too, and persistent. The research mission, then.

And then, when the Pact got to them—

It would be wrong to say _wore them down_ though they can understand the cliché. To be sure. To be sure. No, they’re learning, new ways to be that are really their old way that was them all along. Now: no course is forbidden to them. Now: the dam breaks.

If they hadn’t figured it out the first few times, well, now they have it down to a science. An art. A way of being. A thousand tons of rock is nothing compared to the wholeness of them. The wonderful, simple fact of their being what they are. What’s a human body to that? To acid? To a river? To time? Principality people die so easy, only knowing one way to be alive.

Just because they work fast, baby, doesn’t mean they rush it. They’re always their real self, their best self, but this is when they really get to be themself. That. Corrasion. Things like standing-sitting-moving-talking-smiling-breathing, these are adaptations, modifications, as much as any way you would change yourself for war. Not bad, still them, only a little less. A little different. When they dissolve someone there are no concessions to anything. Just them. The whole of them.

So they don’t rush, no matter how quick it looks from the outside. They enjoy it just as much every time, wash eroding over skin down through pores and mouth into lungs into meat into cells carving themself in. An invitation to look at this beautiful thing they’ve built. The euphoria of self-assertion. Abrading a someone into a shape like a sculpture, as if to say: here I am! I exist! And furthermore, no one will take that from me!


End file.
